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sustaInaBlE FashIon : a handBooK For Educators
Poor working conditions are endemic in the industry, and
the environmental impact throughout the product lifecycle
is high. Students pursuing fashion related courses will go
on to fill decision-making roles in the industry. If they are
to make decisions that move the industry towards social,
environmental and economic sustainability, it is important
that they are informed to understand and critically assess
it’s impact on people and the planet, and the initiatives that
are taking place to address this impact.
Through the work of the Labour Behind the Label
educational project, Fashioning an Ethical Industry in the
UK, and that of Educators for Socially Responsible Apparel
Business in the USA, it has become apparent that many
educators around the world are teaching about the
social and environmental issues in creative ways in their
classrooms, lecture theatres and studios.
While a significant number of resources about the social
and environmental impact of the fashion industry are
available, there is only a small and emerging body of
materials exploring how to teach on the issues. Sustainable
Fashion: A Handbook for Educators aims to fill that gap.
We circulated an international call for papers and were
impressed with the response from educators and training
providers. The Handbook contains 45 contributions,
mainly from the USA, UK and Austria, but also from
Poland, The Netherlands and Australia. We hope that any
future editions will include papers from producer country
educators. Sadly, time and resources meant we were
unable to actively seek papers from these countries.
This Handbook brings together practical ideas on how to
teach about social and environmental responsibility in the
fashion industry, rather than being a series of papers about
the issues. The Handbook contains ideas for assignments,
class based interactive activities, project briefs, course
outlines, case studies, teaching experiences and reading lists.
The Handbook does not aspire to be a comprehensive
teaching guide with a beginning, middle and end. Our
aim is more modest: to draw together examples of the
work already being carried out by educators around the
world and to inspire others to include topics of social
responsibility in their teaching. On this note, it is important
to state that the views expressed by the authors do
not necessarily reflect the views of the editors or their
organisations.We have divided the Handbook into six chapters:- The Design section includes essays, teaching activities and
design ideas aimed at design, garment technology and
product development courses. - The Business section includes teaching materials for
business, sourcing, retail management, buying, socially
responsible business and merchandising courses. - The Marketing section includes teaching activities
for marketing, visual merchandising, promotion,
consumer behaviour, strategic fashion management and
communications courses. - The Cross-curricular section includes reading lists and
teaching ideas for use within all fashion disciplines
including theory and contextual studies. - The Interactive Activities section is relevant to all courses.
- The Pedagogy and Institutional Approaches section
includes summaries of various approaches taken to
teaching sustainable fashion, including development of
new courses and curricula, case studies and the role of
placements.
You will find a summary of each paper in the introductory
sections to each chapter. We have also included
information about further reading and resources.
The Handbook is available to download from http://www.
fashioninganethicalindustry.org in three formats: the entire
publication, by chapter and by individual contribution.In the process of publishing this Handbook, it became
clear that the terminology used on fashion related courses
is different in different countries. Therefore, we have a